Posts
Taking Back Our Power
The following was submitted to Massage and Bodywork Magazine in response to an article about medical massage therapy. For a complete understanding, please read the article at http://www.massageandbodywork.com/Articles/FebMar2007/medicalmassage.html.
Kudos to Deane Juhan for an excellent analysis of the current state of affairs regarding medical massage. I wish to comment on the “strictly uncoincidental” American Medical Massage Association (AMMA) link to the American Medical Association. He is correct in linking the attempt of the AMA to defraud the public about the benefits of holistic therapies. Many people don’t know that Medical Freedom was an original vision of the Founders of America.
“History can often yield insights into our dilemmas. Health care is no exception. The Founders of America envisioned a health-care system based on principles of the dignity and liberty of every person. They were:
1. A right to work. England’s system of guilds and licenses kept many people out of the healing arts. America would allow anyone to become a doctor or to open a healing school or clinic.
2. A right to choice. America would permit a variety of healers and healing modalities. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Constitution and the “Father of American Psychiatry”, believed that Americans should enshrine the right to medical freedom in their Constitution, much as the right to freedom of religion is expressly guaranteed in that document. Rush is reported to have argued that "Unless we put Medical Freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship . . . to restrict the art of healing to one class of men, and deny equal privilege to others, will be to constitute the Bastille of Medical Science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a Republic ... The Constitution of this Republic should make special privilege for Medical Freedom as well as Religious Freedom." (1)
3. A limited role of government to protect the right to contract and to prevent fraud. Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution reads, “No state shall ... pass any ... law impairing the obligation of contracts.” Laws against fraud were to protect the health consumer. The government was not to play favorites and could not pay for, restrict, or subsidize any group or healing method.” (2)
Why was this not included in the Constitution of the United States? I’m still looking for the history of that.
The history of the AMA is that it engaged in a deliberate propaganda war against what it termed “irregular” practitioners starting in 1900. “The main purpose of a medical society/association is to provide political pressure to adopt laws that would kill the competition.” (1) For more information on what the AMA doesn’t want you to know about it, go to http://www.newstarget.com/008845.html , “What the American Medical Association hopes you never learn about its true history.” (3) In this excellently researched article, you will discover that the AMA continues its campaign to kill the competition over 100 years later.
I shudder to think what would happen if the AMMA is successful in its propaganda campaign against “fringe” massage and bodywork modalities. I am trained in and use almost all of the “fringe” therapies they list in their position statement with great success and benefit to my clients. As a “therapist of high caliber desiring professional recognition for what [I] am able to do”, I am not willing to stand by and let that happen. For my part, I educate my clients, as well as the public, through my newsletters, website, and blog. I encourage everyone to do the same. Through grassroots efforts that include all of the massage associations and the public we will be able to achieve the ability to be a respected part the healthcare team functioning in a multidisciplinary environment, just as Deane Juhan envisions.
Debra Redman, LMT, NCTMB
Atlanta, Georgia
(1) The Wellness Directory of Minnesota, http://www.mnwelldir.org/, History of Medicine
(2) Dr. Lawrence D. Wilson, “Healing the Health-Care System” (2001), http://www.fff.org/freedom/1201e.asp
(3) Jessica Fraser, “What the American Medical Association hopes you never learn about its true history”, (Thursday, June 23, 2005), http://www.newstarget.com/008845.html
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Clean Living Announced As Newest Health Craze
November, 2004
The cover of Forbes magazine dated November 29, 2004, declared that the pharmaceutical industry has a new enemy: Clean Living. To have a respected influential business magazine make this a major cover story is great news for those of us who are holistic wellness practitioners. While I agree with much of the Forbes article, I feel that it doesn’t go far enough in giving people the information they need about all of the choices they have in moving towards clean living.
Living “clean” today is far more difficult than this article suggests. The reporter, Robert Langreth, tells us that it’s estimated that 2 million cases each year of chemical drug complications results in at least 180,000 deaths or life-threatening illnesses and that every few years some 'miracle cure’ is found to be toxic. I laugh about that because we are beginning to see that the drug companies know their so-called miracle cures are toxic before they ever hit the market.
Mr. Langreth goes on to list some of the common things for which people are taking drugs such as heartburn, hypertension, high cholesterol, thinning bones, anxiety and depression, chronic pain, and insomnia. The drug alternative he lists for all of them is diet and exercise. For the last three he also adds cognitive-behavioral therapy. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is talk therapy that teaches people to condition themselves to break distorted thinking patterns during a course of 12 to 20 sessions. During those sessions, anti-psychotic drugs, such as Paxil, Prozac, and others, are prescribed. The drug-free alternatives that are by no means the only effective drug-free alternatives available.
The cover of Forbes magazine dated November 29, 2004, declared that the pharmaceutical industry has a new enemy: Clean Living. To have a respected influential business magazine make this a major cover story is great news for those of us who are holistic wellness practitioners. While I agree with much of the Forbes article, I feel that it doesn’t go far enough in giving people the information they need about all of the choices they have in moving towards clean living.
Living “clean” today is far more difficult than this article suggests. The reporter, Robert Langreth, tells us that it’s estimated that 2 million cases each year of chemical drug complications results in at least 180,000 deaths or life-threatening illnesses and that every few years some 'miracle cure’ is found to be toxic. I laugh about that because we are beginning to see that the drug companies know their so-called miracle cures are toxic before they ever hit the market.
Mr. Langreth goes on to list some of the common things for which people are taking drugs such as heartburn, hypertension, high cholesterol, thinning bones, anxiety and depression, chronic pain, and insomnia. The drug alternative he lists for all of them is diet and exercise. For the last three he also adds cognitive-behavioral therapy. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is talk therapy that teaches people to condition themselves to break distorted thinking patterns during a course of 12 to 20 sessions. During those sessions, anti-psychotic drugs, such as Paxil, Prozac, and others, are prescribed. The drug-free alternatives that are by no means the only effective drug-free alternatives available.
Factors That Inhibit The Clean Living Movement
There are so many factors that create “Clean Living.” Diet and exercise are certainly a huge part of that; however, consider the following influences: Disease-causing chemicals in our food and environment are insidious and difficult to remove. True and complete nutritional information about the effects of food allergies such as wheat, soy, and dairy would have to be revealed.
The American public is still fearful of natural healing modalities thanks to the American Medical Association’s century-old propaganda campaign against natural healing modalities. Much of the American public does not have access to the resources they need to make informed decisions about their health and well-being. The American public is cowed into believing whatever “the authorities” tell them to believe. We have become a nation of people who have given up our own personal power and allow the media, government agencies, and the pharmaceutical and chemical companies to control us.
How Do We Begin?
How does someone who wants to begin real Clean Living go about doing it then? In order for anyone to live cleanly, they must be able to 1) break away from the herd and do their own research; 2) be willing to buck the trends and pay for only those things that truly promote clean living once they know what those things are; 3) be willing to develop a level of patience and determination to allow the new information and processes to have an effect; and 4) their experiences as they move through the physical, emotional, and spiritual changes that clean living creates must be validated.
I believe the American public is ready and willing to move in this direction. As of 1999, it is reported that Americans spent over $13.7 billion on complementary and alternative modalities. That estimate only includes the four most cited and officially (government sanctioned) recognized modalities: chiropractic, massage, herbs, and acupuncture. It is my conviction that as Americans begin to take back their power through clean living, they will be motivated to advocate for societal changes that will create better government, safer environments, and a more peaceful existence in the world.
Taking Back Our Power
Dr. Benjamin Rush was the first physician general of the new American government, being appointed to that office in 1777. Rush Medical Hospital in Chicago, IL is named after him. At the Constitutional Convention in 1776, Dr. Benjamin Rush told legislators: "The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic." He went on to say: " Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers." Indeed, his prediction has proven to be very accurate.
The need for a more vocal and active grassroots public education campaign is needed in order to promote Clean Living as the new healthcare and political action program in America. The pharmaceutical and chemical companies have a proven track record of misinformation and lying by omission (i.e., Vioxx as the most recent example). How many people in the general population know that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), a branch of the National Institute for Health (NIH), has existed since 1992? The government does not promote the fact that in 2004 Congress approved and allocated almost $118 million in the federal budget to study CAM. This would be good news if it weren’t so evident that the pharmaceutical companies and the medical industry heavily influence the activities of NCCAM. We can’t rely on the existing special interest groups to promote Clean Living. The public needs advocates who can do the research, disseminate unbiased information, and provide the forums for the public to speak out and be heard. For this reason, I propose that people be motivated to establish an official Clean Living movement who’s goal is to help each individual American citizen take back their power through the use of whatever holistic modalities work for them.
Resources Cited:
http://www.mnwelldir.org
http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/index.asp
Forbes magazine, November 29, 2004, volume 174, number 11, pages 102-112, “Just Say No!” by Robert Langreth.
http://nccam.nih.gov
Hawaii Med J. 1999 Feb;58(2):9-19. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM): a review for the primary care physician. Onopa J., University of Hawaii, Department of Medicine, Honolulu 96813, USA.
The Importance of Doing Your Inner Work
When I finally decided to go to massage school in Chicago, IL, I had already been a practicing energy worker and craniosacral therapist for about eight years. Like so many people who have abuse histories, I turned to alternative healing when traditional therapies no longer worked. I was introduced and practiced healing modalities such as reiki, vibrational healing, Healing Touch, and many others for seven years before becoming a paid therapist.
During those seven years, I experienced quantum leaps in my own personal healing. I went from being in victim-mode to transcending survivor-mode. Along that road, I learned many things about what it means to be a healer. I witnessed what happens when a person who is not working on healing their own emotional and spiritual life calls themselves a "healer" and then attempts to use the techniques of energy healing to manipulate others. When I became a professional therapist, I used these examples to remind me of the potential power a therapist has on a client's healing. Over time, I found myself teaching the importance of doing inner work to other therapists, some of whom had been practicing therapists for years. I also attempted to teach these concepts to new students in a massage therapy school. Unfortunately, the standard massage therapy program does not allow for that kind of information to be taught.
Many people gravitate to the healing professions (psychotherapy, counseling, massage therapy, vibrational healing, etc.) because they are using those modalities to heal the emotional and spiritual issues they are experiencing. Almost everyone, as they achieve milestones in healing, wants to share what they've learned with everyone they know. They naturally want others who are also experiencing similar traumas to benefit from what they've recently learned. The best way to know that you have learned something is to teach it to others. This is the beginning of being a channel of healing energy. Whether the "teacher" is a clear channel of healing energy is another issue.
As Gregg Braden writes in his new book, The Divine Matrix, quantum physics is now proving that there is no separation between anything. When you come into contact with another being, you leave behind a part of you that stays with that person. The emotions that you feel react instantly, beyond distance and time. When you touch someone, you leave behind epithelial cells. Those cells are not separate from you just because they are now on someone else's body. They continue to react to your emotions. If you feel anger, fear, sadness, depression, happiness, joy, or peacefulness, those cells feel it at exactly the same time. The person to whom those cells were transferred also feels your emotions. When you consistently feel low-vibrational feelings, the other person reacts to those feelings and the cycle of emotional and spiritual chaos continues until someone changes their feelings to a higher vibration.
The impact of this scientific fact on the healing professions has, I believe, not been fully appreciated. For example, there are hundreds of institutions teaching massage therapy. With some exceptions, the required curriculum in most of these schools does not include any training on vibrational healing nor is there any formal discussion about the importance of emotional and spiritual health of the massage therapist. Potential students are not educated about this important requirement before they are enrolled in a program and, unfortunately, many people teaching massage therapy do not understand it.
Ok, to be fair, there is a five-minute discussion about the concept of psychological transference and counter-transference in the required ethics class. That is the only discussion about the role the therapist's emotions play in the healing process or the impact of the client's energy on the therapist. Students are required to memorize the formal definitions of each term and regurgitate it on a test. This is certainly not the way to impress upon a potential channel of healing energy the importance of doing their inner work! More time must be devoted to developing a complimentary program in the standard massage curriculum that supports the emotional healing and spiritual growth of people who want to be massage therapists.
Why is this important? As the public becomes more and more aware of the power of therapeutic massage modalities, the massage industry has exploded. Potential clients are searching for a therapist who can address them holistically and help them heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Therapists who are consistently working to maintain their own emotional and spiritual health will be highly sought after because they will be capable of facilitating that process. The therapist who has technical skill and who does not do their inner work will continue to serve those in the population who don't want to experience holistic healing. Both people will be successful monetarily. Both people will facilitate a particular level of healing. Only one will consistently demonstrate an understanding of the work and participate in the joy of watching clients make miraculous breakthroughs in healing. And isn't that the reason why you wanted to be a healer in the first place?
During those seven years, I experienced quantum leaps in my own personal healing. I went from being in victim-mode to transcending survivor-mode. Along that road, I learned many things about what it means to be a healer. I witnessed what happens when a person who is not working on healing their own emotional and spiritual life calls themselves a "healer" and then attempts to use the techniques of energy healing to manipulate others. When I became a professional therapist, I used these examples to remind me of the potential power a therapist has on a client's healing. Over time, I found myself teaching the importance of doing inner work to other therapists, some of whom had been practicing therapists for years. I also attempted to teach these concepts to new students in a massage therapy school. Unfortunately, the standard massage therapy program does not allow for that kind of information to be taught.
Many people gravitate to the healing professions (psychotherapy, counseling, massage therapy, vibrational healing, etc.) because they are using those modalities to heal the emotional and spiritual issues they are experiencing. Almost everyone, as they achieve milestones in healing, wants to share what they've learned with everyone they know. They naturally want others who are also experiencing similar traumas to benefit from what they've recently learned. The best way to know that you have learned something is to teach it to others. This is the beginning of being a channel of healing energy. Whether the "teacher" is a clear channel of healing energy is another issue.
As Gregg Braden writes in his new book, The Divine Matrix, quantum physics is now proving that there is no separation between anything. When you come into contact with another being, you leave behind a part of you that stays with that person. The emotions that you feel react instantly, beyond distance and time. When you touch someone, you leave behind epithelial cells. Those cells are not separate from you just because they are now on someone else's body. They continue to react to your emotions. If you feel anger, fear, sadness, depression, happiness, joy, or peacefulness, those cells feel it at exactly the same time. The person to whom those cells were transferred also feels your emotions. When you consistently feel low-vibrational feelings, the other person reacts to those feelings and the cycle of emotional and spiritual chaos continues until someone changes their feelings to a higher vibration.
The impact of this scientific fact on the healing professions has, I believe, not been fully appreciated. For example, there are hundreds of institutions teaching massage therapy. With some exceptions, the required curriculum in most of these schools does not include any training on vibrational healing nor is there any formal discussion about the importance of emotional and spiritual health of the massage therapist. Potential students are not educated about this important requirement before they are enrolled in a program and, unfortunately, many people teaching massage therapy do not understand it.
Ok, to be fair, there is a five-minute discussion about the concept of psychological transference and counter-transference in the required ethics class. That is the only discussion about the role the therapist's emotions play in the healing process or the impact of the client's energy on the therapist. Students are required to memorize the formal definitions of each term and regurgitate it on a test. This is certainly not the way to impress upon a potential channel of healing energy the importance of doing their inner work! More time must be devoted to developing a complimentary program in the standard massage curriculum that supports the emotional healing and spiritual growth of people who want to be massage therapists.
Why is this important? As the public becomes more and more aware of the power of therapeutic massage modalities, the massage industry has exploded. Potential clients are searching for a therapist who can address them holistically and help them heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Therapists who are consistently working to maintain their own emotional and spiritual health will be highly sought after because they will be capable of facilitating that process. The therapist who has technical skill and who does not do their inner work will continue to serve those in the population who don't want to experience holistic healing. Both people will be successful monetarily. Both people will facilitate a particular level of healing. Only one will consistently demonstrate an understanding of the work and participate in the joy of watching clients make miraculous breakthroughs in healing. And isn't that the reason why you wanted to be a healer in the first place?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
